Spiders/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Tim shines a flashlight in a dark garage. TIM: Moby? Moby, is that you? Tim shines his flashlight on Moby sitting on the floor looking frightened. TIM: What are you hiding from? Moby looks at Tim and points forward. MOBY: Beep. Tim moves the flashlight and finds a spider crawling in front of his feet. TIM: Oh, come on. That's a really small spider. MOBY: Beep. Moby holds up a magnifying glass. Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, are spiders insects? From, Melsar. TIM: No, Melsar. Spiders are not insects. They belong to a group of arthropods called arachnids. Ticks, scorpions, and mites are arachnids, too. An image shows an arachnid family tree with branches connecting to all of the groups Tim names. TIM: A spider's body is divided into two sections. Here we have the cephalothorax. It's made up of the head and thorax. An image of a spider's body highlights the cephalothorax, which is at the front and includes the head. TIM: Four pairs of legs are attached to the cephalothorax. That's eight legs in all. The eight legs are highlighted on the spider image. TIM: Most spiders also have eight eyes, although some have fewer. Eyes are highlighted on the image and labeled, up to eight eyes. TIM: This part is called the abdomen. The image shows the highlighted abdomen. It is the large, hind part of the spider. TIM: You'll find many of their organs here, along with specialized glands that produce silk. The image shows the highlighted glands in the spider's abdomen. TIM: This silk is a liquid in their body, but it goes solid when it comes into contact with the air. It becomes an elastic, incredibly strong line of silk that spiders use for all sorts of things. Spiders can hang from long draglines. They protect their eggs with it. Digging spiders line their tunnels with silk. And baby spiders use long strands of it to float on air currents. We call this ballooning, by the way. Animations of the way spiders use silk are shown in succession as Tim describes them. TIM: But my favorite thing they do with it is spin webs. Not all spiders make webs, but the ones that do string them where they live to catch passing insects. An animation shows a spider and its web. TIM: If a bug gets caught in the web, the spider quickly crawls over and ties up the bug with more webbing. It bites the bug, injecting a venom that paralyzes it. An animation shows a bug flying into a web and getting caught in it. A spider crawls up the web, bites the bug, and spins webbing on it. TIM: Oh, by the way, not many spiders are poisonous to humans, but if there are some in your area, then you should learn what they look like so you know how to avoid them. Images show three spiders that are poisonous to humans: a black widow, a wolf spider, and a brown recluse. TIM: So, when a spider is ready to eat its prey, it injects an enzyme that turns the bug into, well, sort of a liquid. Then it sucks down this liquid, consuming the bug. An animation shows the spider's eating process Tim describes. TIM: So those are spiders. All in all, a pretty neat animal. I'll see you next time! Whoa. Tim gets caught in a giant spider web. TIM: Hmm. Oh. Whoa. Whoaaa! Tim sees Moby approaching him menacingly, waving several spider-like arms. The scene fades to black as Tim wakes up from a nap. Moby is standing over him, holding a jar of spiders that he hides behind his back. TIM: Aw, I had this terrible dream. MOBY: Beep. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts Category:BrainPOP Science Transcripts